WITH A MEMBER OF THE ASTRAKHAN MILITARY SOVIET

July 29, 1918

Eliovich at the apparatus. Baku is requesting a reply to yesterday's telegram, which I transmitted to you today.

I will speak via wireless telegraph with Shaumyan personally.

Lenin. I consider my reply to be the telegram that I transmitted today to Astrakhan for Shaumyan*. Are there any questions to which I have not replied?

Eliovich. Today at 12 o'clock Petersburg time, there will be a wireless telegraph conversation personally with Shaumyan from Baku. Is there anything you wish me to transmit to him besides the telegram?

Lenin. No. There is nothing more. I only ask you to inform me whether it is true that the Council of People's Commissars in Baku has submitted its resignation? One more question: if this is not true, then how long does the Bolshevik power in Baku calculate it can hold out?

Eliovich. When can Astrakhan expect aid for Baku, and in what quantity, so that we may prepare vessels and provisions?

Lenin. We cannot promise with certainty, for there is a shortage of troops here as well.

First printed in 1942

in Leninsky Sbornik XXXIV

Printed from the manuscript